THE TRUTH ABOUT MRT3

THE TRUTH ABOUT MRT3

MANILA - Passengers of the Metro Rail Transit-3 (MRT-3) can now purchase the new "beep" cards in five stations.

The private concessionaire, AF Payments, has started pre-selling the contactless cards in North Avenue, Cubao, Shaw Blvd, Ayala and Taft Ave. stations.

The firm started selling the cards at 5 a.m. on Monday and will continue to sell until operations close at 10 p.m.

The sellers are situated near the tellers' booth. Cards are sold at P100 with a load of P80. The remaining P20 is for the card fee.

This stored value card can be used for four years upon purchase. As of 9 a.m., AF Payments has sold around 2,000 pieces of stored value beep cards in all five stations.

They are allocating 50,000 pieces for the whole week. The new ticketing system will be rolled out on all MRT stations starting October 3. Until then, the riders cannot use the cards in MRT platforms, but they can use the cards in both LRT lines.

The new technology will soon allow riders to access the trains across all three rail lines.

The Ayala-MPIC group under AF Payments bagged the contract for the Automated Fare Collection System (AFCS) public-private partnership (PPP) project in 2013.